On Power Creep (example: Holosmith)

[coro.3176]

Fundamentally, combat in this game is about Offensive, Defensive, and Utility skills/abilities/traits.

You win by using your Attack+Utility resources to damage the enemy while using your Defensive+Utility resources to prevent them from damaging you.

The better you match up your defense to the opponent's attacks, the better you will counter their damage. For example, you want to use a channeled block for a long attack like rapid fire instead of wasting 2 dodges. You want to use dodge for unblockable attacks. You want to use reflect on projectiles. You want to use reveal when your opponent stealths. Furthermore, you want to use your defense to counter the MOST damaging skills and MOST critical CCs that the opponent uses because you (unless you're a mirage..) don't have enough defensive resources to counter them all. It can be good play to take autoattacks to the face while saving dodges for big hitters (eg. deaths judgement).

These big hitters are often known as "must-dodge" (or block or invuln or cleanse or whataever) skills, because if you don't, you'll probably lose the fight.

That brings us to Holosmith. Holosmith has 3.5 must-dodge skills all on less than 15s cooldowns. let's go through them:

• Holo Leap: 600 range leap and lots of damage. In PvP, this still hits for good damage every 2 seconds and keeps the holo stuck to you. In WvW, it hits for like 5-7k. The 2s (!!!) cooldown all but guarantees you can't kite them because they will always stick to you again with leap.
• Corona burst: Counting this as 0.5 of a must-dodge skill. By itself, it's not going to kill you, but if you let this hit you, it grants the holo stability, which means you can't cc them as a counter to other damage. On top of that, it hits twice and grants them might. You probably want to use a defensive cooldown on this if you can afford it.
• Photon Blitz: Not much to say. It's just lots of damage that you want to avoid.
• Holo Shockwave: This is a 100% must dodge skill. If you get CC'd by this, you're going to get combo'd down. It does good damage and is a really long CC.

Phew. That's a lot to defend against. It's not impossible though. With careful play, you can do it. (eg. on my Engi, I'll swap to toolkit while the holo is in mid-air jumping to me with Holo Leap, then use Gear Shield to block Holo Leap and the first hit of Corona Burst. Then I'll dodge Shockwave and most of Blitz.)

However .. you have to keep in mind Holo gets all those skills for free with its elite spec. Now that I've wasted all my defense, they can just disable forge and play like a core engineer for a short time while it recharges. Meanwhile I've got no defense left and they have a full bar of weapon skills and utility skills. How am I going to defend against Overcharged Shot and Jump Shot when I spent all my defense on Photon Forge?

I just don't see how Holo can ever be balanced with Core Engi when it gets such ridiculous power and sacrifices nothing. The heat mechanic is not a downside. In fact it ends up providing almost as much as a free heal skill every 20s.

[coro.3176]

So what do we do about this?

I recommend a few things:

• Photon Forge is really powerful. Give it some kind of downside to its use - eg. no ability to reduce heat. If Holo has to weigh using powerful skills vs taking overheat damage, it'll actually be a trade off rather than free skills added to engi (let's face it. giving up a single toolbelt f5 skill is no tradeoff worth mentioning).
• Alternatively, pull some of the power out of Forge to put it back on par with core weapons. Maybe reduce the range on Shockwave (600 units is REALLY far). Maybe increase the cooldown on leap, etc.

[Vagrant.7206]

I'm not sure I understand the emphasis on Holosmith, when the thread says it's just an example. Pretty much every PoF elite spec has some kind of absurd power creep at this point, with maybe the exception of renegade. The problem is that once you engage in this kind of powercreep, it's hard to tune down. Because taking one class down by itself may render some other class super OP or result in some oddly lopsided behavior.

It's easy to make sweeping generalizations such as "Reduce power damaage!!!11!" or "Reduce condi damage!!1111!" or "Reduce CC!!11!1!" but this ignores the fact that these things don't exist in a vacuum. Any of the elite specs, by comparison to core specs, are way overpowered, but next to each other... eh, they're ok. So if you're asking to take holosmith down to core engineer level of threat, what you're really saying is that you don't want holosmith in the current meta, much like you don't really find most core classes in the meta.

[coro.3176]

@"Vagrant.7206" said:I'm not sure I understand the emphasis on Holosmith, when the thread says it's just an example. Pretty much every PoF elite spec has some kind of absurd power creep at this point, with maybe the exception of renegade. The problem is that once you engage in this kind of powercreep, it's hard to tune down. Because taking one class down by itself may render some other class super OP or result in some oddly lopsided behavior.

It's easy to make sweeping generalizations such as "Reduce power damaage!!!11!" or "Reduce condi damage!!1111!" or "Reduce CC!!11!1!" but this ignores the fact that these things don't exist in a vacuum. Any of the elite specs, by comparison to core specs, are way overpowered, but next to each other... eh, they're ok. So if you're asking to take holosmith down to core engineer level of threat, what you're really saying is that you don't want holosmith in the current meta, much like you don't really find most core classes in the meta.

You're right. That's sort of where I was going with this post, but didn't want to write an entire novel. A lot of elite specs are similar by analogy (but not all!).

• Mirage gets better, longer dodges for free.

• Druid gets CA healing + cc skills for free.

• Daredevil gets a free extra dodge.

• Even Scrapper, with it's often mocked class mechanic, gets a free stomp/res gyro.

• .. but Holo is by far the worst offender for power creep, getting a suite of low cooldown, must dodge skills and giving nothing up (1 toolbelt skill doesn't count).

  Some elite specs are legitimate trade offs though:

• Reaper gives up Death Shroud for Reaper Shroud

• Deadeye gives up Steal for Mark

• Spellbreaker gives up a bar of adrenaline

Now, you can argue whether those classes are balanced or not, but in principle they can be balanced because they've given up something to get their new mechanic.

For the former group, if the elite traitline was much worse than the core traitlines, this could be a fair trade. In practice, the elite traitlines are almost universally better, so they're pretty power creeped. In fact, I think Holo would probably still be better than core even with NO MAJOR TRAITS slotted at all.

I just picked Holo because I think it's the best example of pure power creep on an elite spec.

Edit: and to clarify, I want all elite specs nerfed down to core levels.

[Fat Disgrace.4275]

Make it so you can't use utility skills, huehue.

[Vagrant.7206]

@coro.3176 said:

I just picked Holo because I think it's the best example of pure power creep on an elite spec.

But by your own admission, holo does give something up when compared to core -- its F5 skill. The F5 skills for engineer can be pretty potent (save orbital cannon). Sure, it's not a massive tradeoff, but the other examples you listed are debatable as well. I don't think you'd find most necros complaining about giving up Death Shroud in its current incarnation (huehuehue).

In an ideal world, yeah, I'd like everything on par with core. Is that realistic to expect at this point? I doubt it. These elite specs are designed around their powercreep, and it's extremely hard to reverse once it gets going. The more reasonable approach, IMO, is to buff core stuff to at least be viable against elite specs, if not on par (see core thief S/D, core guard hammer for examples).

[coro.3176]

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@"coro.3176" said:

I just picked Holo because I think it's the best example of pure power creep on an elite spec.

But by your own admission, holo does give something up when compared to core -- its F5 skill. The F5 skills for engineer can be pretty potent (save orbital cannon). Sure, it's not a massive tradeoff, but the other examples you listed are debatable as well. I don't think you'd find most necros complaining about giving up Death Shroud in its current incarnation (huehuehue).

In an ideal world, yeah, I'd like everything on par with core. Is that realistic to expect at this point? I doubt it. These elite specs are designed around their powercreep, and it's extremely hard to reverse once it gets going. The more reasonable approach, IMO, is to buff core stuff to at least be viable against elite specs, if not on par (see core thief S/D, core guard hammer for examples).

Sure. that's an option .. but I think that's difficult to do unless there is a "core traitline" that elite specs can't use which could be buffed to compensate. As it stands now, elite specs can pick and choose the best of core and it's difficult to create synergies that require three full core traitlines and can compete with the elite powercreep AND not make the elite powercreep worse. S/D thief and Core Guard are the exceptions, not the rule.

[SteepledHat.1345]

@Fat Disgrace.4275 said:Make it so you can't use utility skills, huehue.

No class ever has to deal with that.... cries in reaper

[Math.5123]

@"coro.3176" said:

Edit: and to clarify, I want all elite specs nerfed down to core levels.

Can we "nerf" DH up to core guard level?

[XECOR.2814]

Just make it skills producee more heat and reduce the effects of traits that lower it. Make holo get punished for overheating more. Right now you dont even have to worry about heat.

[Mbelch.9028]

Why is this thread in PvP when you're only talking about engineers (holo, which you are confirmed to have serious bias against) as well as WvW?

I don't feel like writing a novel, so I'm going to bullet some things out:

• I NEVER hit 5k in PvP with holo leap. It's a utility tool to move around and gapclose, although it is outclassed as a gap closer by half of the classes in the game or more.
• Heat is the detractor of holosmith. Many people have yet to accept that holo skills are on a lower cooldown because they generate a lot of heat, and heat kills a holo. You can't use shockwave every 15 seconds just like it's a warrior's whirling greatsword. It doesn't work like that.
• Chill is also a fairly hard counter for holosmith's photon forge. If you haven't figured this out, well, there you go. Classes that drop chill on Holo royally mess it up. Elementalists that have figured this out are a pain in the butt.
• There's really only 1 must-dodge skill from a holo, and that's corona burst. The true key to this, admittedly confusing, skill is either out-ranging the first burst, because most holos use it to open fights, and then dodging the explosion, or just dodging both. A holo with no stability is a dead holo. I can't tell you how many holosmiths I 100-0 (and every so often I get 0-100'd by people like Lycar who know this better than I do) by using that seriously easy way to dismantle a holo. Okay, let me play devil's advocate for the people who will come in and say "but you have elixir for stability," well yes, but it's only one stack, as opposed to corona burst's potential two. Use two CC skills, or one soft CC, wait out the stack and then use hard CC.

[Bossun.2046]

@"Mbelch.9028" said:Why is this thread in PvP when you're only talking about engineers (holo, which you are confirmed to have serious bias against) as well as WvW?

I don't feel like writing a novel, so I'm going to bullet some things out:

• I NEVER hit 5k in PvP with holo leap. It's a utility tool to move around and gapclose, although it is outclassed as a gap closer by half of the classes in the game or more.
• Heat is the detractor of holosmith. Many people have yet to accept that holo skills are on a lower cooldown because they generate a lot of heat, and heat kills a holo. You can't use shockwave every 15 seconds just like it's a warrior's whirling greatsword. It doesn't work like that.
• Chill is also a fairly hard counter for holosmith's photon forge. If you haven't figured this out, well, there you go. Classes that drop chill on Holo royally mess it up. Elementalists that have figured this out are a pain in the butt.
• There's really only 1 must-dodge skill from a holo, and that's corona burst. The true key to this, admittedly confusing, skill is either out-ranging the first burst, because most holos use it to open fights, and then dodging the explosion, or just dodging both. A holo with no stability is a dead holo. I can't tell you how many holosmiths I 100-0 (and every so often I get 0-100'd by people like Lycar who know this better than I do) by using that seriously easy way to dismantle a holo. Okay, let me play devil's advocate for the people who will come in and say "but you have elixir for stability," well yes, but it's only one stack, as opposed to corona burst's potential two. Use two CC skills, or one soft CC, wait out the stack and then use hard CC.

This x10000000000000

[Exalted Quality.8534]

TD:LR another holo-bashing threadSeriously folks, leave holo alone. Holos were among the hardest hit in recent balance patches. You people won’t stop complaining until holo is as useless as scrapper. Find another spec to complain about lol.

[Dace.8173]

I can't take a power creep argument that says Holo doesn't give up something and yet somehow wants to indicate that Mirage of all things gave up something to be more powerful than the rest of the game seriously. Holosmith may be strong but it is, by far, not the worst offender. You also seem to be really generous on what other Elites gave up to get their power. Spellbreaker gives up an Adrenaline bar for a full block/counter. Big loss there. Deadeye gave up stealing in order to gain a powerful one-shot move and perm-stealth. Another big loss there. Giving up Death Shroud is somehow a trade-off for Reaper Shroud? Everyone sees the Holosmith coming, yet a perm-stealthed thief sitting well outside the firing range of everyone but Ranger is somehow the lesser issue.

As for bringing Elites down to core level, why? That's the selling point of Elites, they make you more powerful than you were beforehand. They are meant to be stronger than Core. That's what people want when they buy an expansion, they want the new toys to make them more powerful than before. Other games do this by raising the level cap. This game decided to keep its level cap and instead do Elites. No matter how you slice it though, people want this higher level of power.

[Dediggefedde.4961]

I think Arenanet is already targeting the difference between core and elite specs.During the last few months, most skills of Firearms and inventions and some of explosions and alchemy were changed. Before there were traitlines with 2 useless traits in all tiers. Now you can even switch traitlines without losing a build's mechanic.

For example, an anti-condi holosmith often takes invention and alchemy. You can switch alchemy for explosives for a damage increase in turn for the boon conversion and still remove the same condition. Or go to grieving stats, use firearms and solar focusing lenses and get a nice dual-damage build with still the same condition removal abilities. Or go to Tools for an SD variant for higher ranged&single target damage.

In my opinion, also for other classes, is if all traitlines are equally strong in their field. Then the power creep should not be a problem anymore. Runes and sigils also got the power-creep update now. There are still some traits, skills, and buff-food untouched (supply crate itself, throw mine, soothing detonation, to list a few), but it's on a good way in my opinion.

However, equalizing will always be prioritized on the elite specs, since they bring a large part of the money. ^^

[Silinsar.6298]

This seems to be more of a complaint about a specific match up than a comprehensive evaluation of how the power creep's hurting the game so you'd probably be better off just asking for advice.

@coro.3176 said:Fundamentally, combat in this game is about Offensive, Defensive, and Utility skills/abilities/traits.

You win by using your Attack+Utility resources to damage the enemy while using your Defensive+Utility resources to prevent them from damaging you.

The better you match up your defense to the opponent's attacks, the better you will counter their damage. For example, you want to use a channeled block for a long attack like rapid fire instead of wasting 2 dodges. You want to use dodge for unblockable attacks. You want to use reflect on projectiles. You want to use reveal when your opponent stealths. Furthermore, you want to use your defense to counter the MOST damaging skills and MOST critical CCs that the opponent uses because you (unless you're a mirage..) don't have enough defensive resources to counter them all. It can be good play to take autoattacks to the face while saving dodges for big hitters (eg. deaths judgement).

Okay, so here your problem already becomes apparent. You only think of defense to defend yourself. You should only ever only think to defend yourself when offense is not an option. Holo is susceptible to counter pressure, if you focus on defending yourself and do not pressure a Holo while it's most vulnerable you're playing into it's hands, because in the end your defenses will run out before a Holo's offensive capabilities do.

@coro.3176 said:

These big hitters are often known as "must-dodge" (or block or invuln or cleanse or whataever) skills, because if you don't, you'll probably lose the fight.

That brings us to Holosmith. Holosmith has 3.5 must-dodge skills all on less than 15s cooldowns. let's go through them:

• Holo Leap: 600 range leap and lots of damage. In PvP, this still hits for good damage every 2 seconds and keeps the holo stuck to you. In WvW, it hits for like 5-7k. The 2s (!!!) cooldown all but guarantees you can't kite them because they will always stick to you again with leap.

Nope, leap's a must hit (in the best case with immob or CC) skill, not a must dodge skill. If the Holo's not already in melee range it's predictable and the holo doesn't have any stab from Corona yet because he's just closing in. Leap locks the holo in an animation that makes it unable to react to anything. Leap's one of the skills that makes Holo most vulnerable, frequently. If you hit it with a CC/immob you get free damage, the holo's stuck (open for more damage) and won't do any. It either has to wait and drop out of forge to get back to a set that has range pressure or continue efforts to close in (increasing heat which will limit what it can do at melee when it's finally there).About the CD and literally all other PF CDs: take heat into account. Very roughly (and with the passive heat gain during the usage) an AA chain is about 10%, same as #2 and #3, number #4 and #5 are 20+.

• Corona burst: Counting this as 0.5 of a must-dodge skill. By itself, it's not going to kill you, but if you let this hit you, it grants the holo stability, which means you can't cc them as a counter to other damage. On top of that, it hits twice and grants them might. You probably want to use a defensive cooldown on this if you can afford it.

This is actually what you really want to dodge if a holo's going into forge since it allows the holo to stick to you (and subsequently leap to you) without the risk of being CC'd and deal damage. If you can't dodge it at least try to get away fast to outrange the second hit and wait out the stab.

• Photon Blitz: Not much to say. It's just lots of damage that you want to avoid.

It's chunk of damage yes, but can be utilised against the holo (reflect) or again, use the time to cc/immob and run out of it's range. The skill usually only's worth it if the enemy's on the edge of it's range (otherwise holo's better of closing the gap) so outranging parts of it is quite possible.

@coro.3176 said:

• Holo Shockwave: This is a 100% must dodge skill. If you get CC'd by this, you're going to get combo'd down. It does good damage and is a really long CC.

If you're close to the holo you can move directly on him and it won't hit you. Otherwise yes, dodge it, or blind / cc it or stab yourself, eat it and keep up your damage while the holo can't move. Notice a pattern? Do some pressure yourself, holo's open to it most of the time.

@coro.3176 said:Phew. That's a lot to defend against. It's not impossible though. With careful play, you can do it. (eg. on my Engi, I'll swap to toolkit while the holo is in mid-air jumping to me with Holo Leap, then use Gear Shield to block Holo Leap and the first hit of Corona Burst. Then I'll dodge Shockwave and most of Blitz.)

For the leap open, as said, immob or cc it. If you block while the holo's leaping you're doing it a favor because you allow it to close in without risk.Also, if you're playing core engi, you're asking to get outmatched by a lot of other specs (sad as that is). If you then not learn to better fight these specs I do not wonder you get frustrated. Immobilizing or CC'ing a leaping melee is engi 101. Since vanilla.

@coro.3176 said:However .. you have to keep in mind Holo gets all those skills for free with its elite spec. Now that I've wasted all my defense, they can just disable forge and play like a core engineer for a short time while it recharges. Meanwhile I've got no defense left and they have a full bar of weapon skills and utility skills. How am I going to defend against Overcharged Shot and Jump Shot when I spent all my defense on Photon Forge?

Since you didn't use any attack, defend yourself with OS maybe or jump shot the holo? But really, you should use OS and Net shot while the Holo's most susceptible to it (PF). That has the potential to negate the advantage of PF and do good damage in the process.

@coro.3176 said:I just don't see how Holo can ever be balanced with Core Engi when it gets such ridiculous power and sacrifices nothing. The heat mechanic is not a downside. In fact it ends up providing almost as much as a free heal skill every 20s.

It's not for free, you lose 1 skill. That's little, I agree. But in the end, PF is a kit, though a very competent one at that. That's why it has an increased opportunity cost (locks you out of weapon and kit skills and therefore you're stuck in a melee set) and a limiter (heat). The forced melee focus / lock is also why holo gets the heal. Melee's a pretty dangerous place for an engi.Holo's a strong upgrade to core and in the upper tiers of the meta, but there's still a lot you can do to fight it.

tl;dr: Holo's stronger than core because core's not up to the meta right now. Get better at fighting or use a spec that doesn't handicap yourself.

[lorddarkflare.9186]

Op I think you stumbled across something that should be discussed: The introduction of a 'Core' spec. Pretty much the cleanest way to handle the powercreep without messing with the flow of the elite specs.

[Zex Anthon.8673]

@lorddarkflare.9186 said:Op I think you stumbled across something that should be discussed: The introduction of a 'Core' spec. Pretty much the cleanest way to handle the powercreep without messing with the flow of the elite specs.

I dont quite follow. Are you suggesting a unique spec only available to core? Cause that would just be another elite spec.

At this point anet should either make elite specs mandatory, or people need to realize that elite specs will always be more powerful than core. There are exceptions, but those builds are few and far between.

[Naxos.2503]

I felt the need to comment, seeing as I main a holosmith (Condi DPS to be precise, with emphasis on condi)

It is an undeniable power house. if I can get the drop on someone, or Something, they're dead meat. Pure and simple. On the flip side, to achieve this degree of deadliness, I have to Literally drop all forms of defense and almost all of my sustain. On that side, I feel my build is "balanced" because what I can do to others, can happen to me.Usually, my holosmith can down targets fast by using several CCs along with wide area damages (bonus if they deal condi damage).

On the flip side, my Stunbreak are Severly limited, and the only one I can technically take, is the elixir gun toolbelt skill, which, if I have in my selection, actually decreases my output by a lot, and only provides small heal, and -1- stunbreak, when enemies often have Many stuns. I thus get easily killed by anyone who can chain a stun, negating all my raw damage output. No, I do not have sustained stability on it. I'm a holosmith, not a core engineer. or a scrapper.

Holosmith is a glass cannon. It looks strong, and is strong. But it's just as brittle. Changing it's strenght negates it's Only advantage : raw damage.

[coro.3176]

@"Naxos.2503" said:I felt the need to comment, seeing as I main a holosmith (Condi DPS to be precise, with emphasis on condi)

It is an undeniable power house. if I can get the drop on someone, or Something, they're dead meat. Pure and simple. On the flip side, to achieve this degree of deadliness, I have to Literally drop all forms of defense and almost all of my sustain. On that side, I feel my build is "balanced" because what I can do to others, can happen to me.Usually, my holosmith can down targets fast by using several CCs along with wide area damages (bonus if they deal condi damage).

On the flip side, my Stunbreak are Severly limited, and the only one I can technically take, is the elixir gun toolbelt skill, which, if I have in my selection, actually decreases my output by a lot, and only provides small heal, and -1- stunbreak, when enemies often have Many stuns. I thus get easily killed by anyone who can chain a stun, negating all my raw damage output. No, I do not have sustained stability on it. I'm a holosmith, not a core engineer. or a scrapper.

Holosmith is a glass cannon. It looks strong, and is strong. But it's just as brittle. Changing it's strenght negates it's Only advantage : raw damage.

It's not though. To achieve its damage, it SHOULD HAVE to be a glass cannon but at the moment, it does not have to be one.

It has high block uptime from shield and spectrum shield that allow stalling while forge is on cooldown. Heat therapy is good sustain, and it has lots of protection, water combos, and damage reduction. While not on the level of some other builds, it also packs enough cleanse to nullify a lot of condi burst - it at least has no problem clearing my first few condi bombs as core/pistols engi. To top it off, if somehow that all fails, passive elixir S will stall an additional 4 seconds, which is often enough to buy a dodge + heal + get you back in the game.

I'm not saying Holo can't be a glass cannon - it certainly is if you don't take the defensive traits/skills, but right now the meta builds get to be both a cannon and have a plethora of defensive fallbacks. It does too much damage for how defensive it can also be, and this is ultimately because it gets a great damage kit on its f5 skill "for free" and thus can spend most or all of its traits + utility skills on defense.

Core engi + Scrapper on the other hand, have to carefully weigh the pros + cons of each skill/trait. They can't fill their bar with all defense like holo does because they'll never kill anyone.

[Naxos.2503]

@"coro.3176" said:

It's not though. To achieve its damage, it SHOULD HAVE to be a glass cannon but at the moment, it does not have to be one.

It has high block uptime from shield and spectrum shield that allow stalling while forge is on cooldown. Heat therapy is good sustain, and it has lots of protection, water combos, and damage reduction. While not on the level of some other builds, it also packs enough cleanse to nullify a lot of condi burst - it at least has no problem clearing my first few condi bombs as core/pistols engi. To top it off, if somehow that all fails, passive elixir S will stall an additional 4 seconds, which is often enough to buy a dodge + heal + get you back in the game.

I'm not saying Holo can't be a glass cannon - it certainly is if you don't take the defensive traits/skills, but right now the meta builds get to be both a cannon and have a plethora of defensive fallbacks. It does too much damage for how defensive it can also be, and this is ultimately because it gets a great damage kit on its f5 skill "for free" and thus can spend most or all of its traits + utility skills on defense.

Core engi + Scrapper on the other hand, have to carefully weigh the pros + cons of each skill/trait. They can't fill their bar with all defense like holo does because they'll never kill anyone.

Shield constitute a drop in DPS. I use Pistol to achieve my DPS. Again, I do not use Heat Therapy, I use the Elixir H, for faster cooldown, more reliable heal, and extra buffs, increasing my DPS, and making my Healing Somewhat more reliable, even if 'technically' less efficient.

The build you faced is on par with a warrior. My build deals Far More damage, and has far more weaknesses as a result. What you faced is Not a problem of damage. It's a problem of Sustain. You mentionned Shield, Elixir S and thus result in Indeed a very defensive build. Why would you want to destroy it's damage then, if defense is the issue ? In this particular case, the skill you mentionned are not tied to Holosmith at all, Holosmith is pure damage. It removes one trait line to achieve that damage. It makes no sense then to diminish that damage, if it's the focus of the class.

What you have is an Engineer issue. Engineers are the Utility class by exellence, they're meant to be hard to counter due to how wide their panel of skills are. Those are meant to counter their weapon switch limitations. An engineer can kit their Entire skills (toolbelt included) to have CC, thus having the ability to near flawlessly continue to CC their target. They can also (as I do) gear almost the entirety of their skills in Burning condi, which can reach some rather insane Numbers. They can also proc a fairly large amount of buffs on allies, if it's their thing. But in Each case, their gear has to be fully tailored to One branch to be somewhat efficient. Yes, holosmith has a large amount of damage, outside of everything else. I fully make use of that fact, to achieve roughly 5k Worth of raw DPS, on a Condi focused build (my condi reach 12k per tick). On the flip side, if I had the condi alone, I'd be pretty much done for, most of the skills that inflict high condi damage are Fields, easily dodged out of, and most of Holo (and engineer in general) CC are either : Long range, but weak soft CC, or short ranged hard CC. It's not that easy to manage to combine both whatever CC you have, and those fields. I often miss my targets. I also can find myself pitted against Necromancers, who transfer All my stacks of condis right back at me, resulting in an insta kill, due to how low my health is, or I face condi cleanse (though that's mitigated by how often I can throw condis).

Photon forge is a big trap. Most skilled players stunlock me as my forge is reaching critical hit, which nearly Always result in me losing enough health to be killed in one shot.Look at it this way : Engineer was built around the concept of being so varied, it's nearly impossible to Fully be able to counter it as a class. On the other hand, Holosmith : Has lenghty animations that often cannot be cancelled, or have a long cooldown if they Are cancelled, Have Very obvious tells (the hologram effect on the character is not a benefit to the Holo, but to Other players. it's the biggest tell in the game), Is Very vulnerable to interrupt and stunlocks.

I -Never- managed to kill a thief with my holo in a duel. As a holo, my attacks are in the melee/short range variety. If I face a deadeye, i'm downed before I even hit them. If I face a Daredevil, they interrupt, stunlock, and dodge all my attacks and fields while downing me while I haven't touched their health. If I face a core thief, their raw damage output and dodge put me out of order just as fast.If you want a hard counter to Holo, look to Any of the thief spec. I have yet to find a way to manage them

[coro.3176]

... uh. Sorry. In my previous response, I mistook you for someone who knew how to play Holo/Engi.

Shield constitute a drop in DPS. I use Pistol to achieve my DPS. Again, I do not use Heat Therapy, I use the Elixir H, for faster cooldown, more reliable heal, and extra buffs, increasing my DPS, and making my Healing Somewhat more reliable, even if 'technically' less efficient....Photon forge is a big trap. Most skilled players stunlock me as my forge is reaching critical hit, which nearly Always result in me losing enough health to be killed in one shot....I -Never- managed to kill a thief with my holo in a duel.

Now it's pretty clear you don't know what you're talking about. Heat therapy is a minor trait, by the way. You can't not use it unless you overheat every time and don't take PBM.

Holosmith : Has lenghty animations that often cannot be cancelled, or have a long cooldown if they Are cancelled, Have Very obvious tells (the hologram effect on the character is not a benefit to the Holo, but to Other players. it's the biggest tell in the game), Is Very vulnerable to interrupt and stunlocks.

Yeah, no it's not. You should be taking Eclipse as your second trait and gaining stability from Corona Burst. That will solve your interrupt problem. In a PvP situation, CB is always going to hit something, so you'll always get that stab.

[Zex Anthon.8673]

@coro.3176 said:Core engi + Scrapper on the other hand, have to carefully weigh the pros + cons of each skill/trait. They can't fill their bar with all defense like holo does because they'll never kill anyone.

I would say this is a fault of core engineer and not holosmith being op. When a class has to use a utility slot to gain a melee swap, something is wrong.

@Naxos.2503 said:If you want a hard counter to Holo, look to Any of the thief spec. I have yet to find a way to manage them

Quickness + hip shot

[Dace.8173]

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@lorddarkflare.9186 said:Op I think you stumbled across something that should be discussed: The introduction of a 'Core' spec. Pretty much the cleanest way to handle the powercreep without messing with the flow of the elite specs.

I dont quite follow. Are you suggesting a unique spec only available to core? Cause that would just be another elite spec.

At this point anet should either make elite specs mandatory, or people need to realize that elite specs will always be more powerful than core. There are exceptions, but those builds are few and far between.

I think people just need to realize that Elite specs will always be more powerful. A lot of MMO's I've played over the years the core specs that were playable before the release of the first expansions were eventually wed out of the game. It's just the natural course of most games. In this game, people want to stay with Core, which is cool. However, that should come with the understanding that they are going to be weaker as Elites (and to some extent the expansion itself) would be unappealing if it was just more of the same.

The other problem is that a lot of folks don't want to learn how to counter an Elite and so they just want them nerfed. Holosmith is strong but it is beatable. It has several weaknesses that can be exploited if a person knows what they are doing. Sadly, instead of that we get a lot of threads that claim Elites are all too strong and need to be depowered.

[Zex Anthon.8673]

@Dace.8173 said:

@Zex Anthon.8673 said:

@lorddarkflare.9186 said:Op I think you stumbled across something that should be discussed: The introduction of a 'Core' spec. Pretty much the cleanest way to handle the powercreep without messing with the flow of the elite specs.

I dont quite follow. Are you suggesting a unique spec only available to core? Cause that would just be another elite spec.

At this point anet should either make elite specs mandatory, or people need to realize that elite specs will always be more powerful than core. There are exceptions, but those builds are few and far between.

I think people just need to realize that Elite specs will always be more powerful. A lot of MMO's I've played over the years the core specs that were playable before the release of the first expansions were eventually wed out of the game. It's just the natural course of most games. In this game, people want to stay with Core, which is cool. However, that should come with the understanding that they are going to be weaker as Elites (and to some extent the expansion itself) would be unappealing if it was just more of the same.

The other problem is that a lot of folks don't want to learn how to counter an Elite and so they just want them nerfed. Holosmith is strong but it is beatable. It has several weaknesses that can be exploited if a person knows what they are doing. Sadly, instead of that we get a lot of threads that claim Elites are all too strong and need to be depowered.

I dont think new elites need to be more powerful than their predecessors to drive sales. I think its entirely possible for future elites to be on the same power level as holo and scrapper while still being interesting. I dont think its realistic to ask anet to balance core professions with their elites.